Through an online course and the incorporation of a platform to visualize individual attendance, the aim is to intervene in cases of repeated absenteeism of children in kindergartens.
Covid-19 has left after-effects in health and also in the school context, becoming one of the most relevant factors when evaluating the current high levels of non-attendance in kindergarten education. For this reason, the kindergartens of the Fundación Protectora de la Infancia have sought to reverse the situation and reintegrate children who are repeatedly absent.
Thus was born the link with Fundación Educacional Oportunidad which, through its Assistance program, began a process to transfer strategies and learning, both to the professionals of La Protectora, as well as to the teaching and management staff of seven of its educational centers.
As part of the process, the need arose to establish an individual attendance indicator that reports the percentage of attendance of each child from March to date. In addition, in order to monitor this process, the attendance platform of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad was made available to visualize this indicator and define a goal to evaluate the work being done.
Paula Herrera, coordinator of the Attendance program, who is leading this collaboration, explained that "this joint work allows educational teams to be trained in different strategies to promote attendance, which can also be adapted to the reality of each of the kindergartens".
Another relevant aspect in the search to strengthen school attendance is the online course that was conducted, which addressed topics such as: Theory of chronic absenteeism, strategies to encourage attendance and the importance of focusing on children.
Claudia Fuentes, director of the Buen Pastor Kindergarten in La Pintana, of the Fundación Protectora de la Infancia, values this collaboration and pointed out that "not only do they provide the technical tools, but also the materials, and that makes the work much easier". He added that "having the opportunity to identify critical cases of assistance and being able to take measures to deal with them is really valuable".
